John the Baptist in Prison

A Meditation on the Word of God | Matthew 11:2-15

Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

Next Sunday, December 21, 2025, will be the shortest day of the year: the day with the most dark, the least light of any day of the year. It is fitting, we find John the Baptist is in the dark.

Jesus says, Among those born of women none is greater than John. Do you know what that means? Kids today like to use the term GOAT. Greatest Of All Time. John is the GOAT. The greatest prophet, the greatest preacher there ever was. A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom the prophets foretold. This is he of whom Malachi spoke of when he said, Behold I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Among those born of women none is greater than John. John is the GOAT.

Yet, in today’s Gospel we learn, even the GOAT can have doubts. Even the GOAT can suffer discouragement. Even the greatest of all God’s prophets can be brought to the second-guessing that wonders, “Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe Jesus really isn’t the Christ at all. Maybe everything I thought in my ministry was a lie.” When you are in that place: that is called a dark night of the soul. John is very much in today’s Gospel in the dark: these satanic doubts filling John’s mind as he languishes away there in a dank dungeon cell, awaiting a martyr’s certain death. Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

You know, I find it a strange comfort that John doubted. I find it a strange comfort that John faced discouragement and satanic attack. Do you know why? There is not a pastor I know who hasn’t faced discouragement. There is not a pastor I know who hasn’t faced satanic attack. There is not a pastor I know who hasn’t wondered—in the face of his own personal setbacks and failures—whether he should even be in the ministry in the first place. And it’s not just pastors who face doubt, discouragement, and Satan’s schemes.

What’s your prison cell? What is your dark dungeon? What pain are you enduring for which all the holiday cheer is like salt in a wound? Is it somebody you love who has died who isn’t going to be there this Christmas? Is it somebody in your life, that there is estrangement—someone with whom you have strained relationship? And you haven’t spoken in years? What is your pain? What makes you second guess the God who has pledged himself to you in love? Because I know something about you. And the reason I know it about you is because I know it about me. And what I know about me and you is, we all have doubts. We all face discouragements. We all have these dark nights of the soul in which we wonder, “Where are you Jesus? I believe you are the Savior—Why aren’t you coming to save me? Won’t you rend the heavens and come down, and give ear to my prayer? Because I tell you Lord, I am dying.”

John was not the first prophet to face discouragement. Actually if you go through the OT you The prophet Jeremiah said, “Lord, I’ve had it with my enemies who mock and deride me all the day. I curse the day I was born. I wish you would have killed me in my mother’s womb.” The prophet Elijah said, “God, I am the only one left. There is no other prophet who is faithful to

you. And so what I am going to do is lay me under this broom tree, and die. Take my life. I am no better than my fathers.” Jonah, when God said, “Go to Nineveh”, said, “No I am going to board a boat and go to the opposite side of the world.” There isn’t a single servant of God who hasn’t faced the advent darkness John experiences. Why is that strangely comforting? At least we’re not alone.

Do you know the best thing John the Baptist did with his discouragement and his doubts? He took them to Jesus. He, as we sing in one of our hymns, “Laid his sins on Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God.” And when he asked Jesus, Are you the one or shall we look for another? What he was really saying was, “Lord, please, give me a word of encouragement.” Please give me a word of comfort that will shine a light in the spiritual darkness that consumes me. Because without it I fear my faith will be extinguished completely.

And you know what Jesus did? In his love and in his mercy, he gave him one. “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: “The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news preached to them, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Put yourself in John’s shoes. Imagine you’re in prison with John awaiting beheading. In a sense we are in prison, because look: this whole world is the valley of the shadow of death where Satan is prince, and where the righteous suffer. Imagine you’re John: and you are coming to the Lord Jesus with your hands full of doubts/discouragement/despair, and you are saying, “Take them, Lord. And give me a good word, an encouraging word that is going to strengthen my faith, so that I will be no reed shaken by the wind, but so that I will remain steadfast in this confession and faith until death.” Jesus comes to you and to me today to speak that word that drives away discouragement and despair and fills you with hope and joy in the Holy Spirit.

John the Baptist misunderstood something about our Lord. John said that the Messiah was going to come with fire. And Jesus did come with fire. But that fire—surprising thing—Jesus didn’t cast it on his enemies. The fire of God’s wrath—His vengeance, his justice, the retribution his enemies deserved—Jesus didn’t throw that fire on others. Rather, he went into that fire himself. He went to the cross and there, bore the wrath of God, for your sins and mine. Jesus Christ was cast into hell for us. He suffered the wrath of God to be poured out on him, why? Because this was the punishment we deserved for our sins. And this was the price, the payment required for the Son of God to redeem us from sin and death:—that he shed his most holy, precious blood. Because nothing less could bring about the world’s salvation.

John was looking for a Messiah who would flex. He wasn’t ready for a Messiah who would come in weakness: to the humiliation of the cross. But every Christian knows that underneath the weakness and humiliation of the cross is God’s power to rescue sinners. This is the Gospel: Christ has redeemed you, by his suffering and death. No matter what it is you are facing now, what dark dungeon you are languishing in today, nothing can separate you from his love.

Dear saints, That word is the word of encouragement from Jesus, to you. That is the Gospel you need to strengthen your faith, upbraid your soul, and steel you for the fight in your spiritual battle with the devil. That Gospel, is what makes it possible on this pink candle Sunday for us to do as Paul commands: Rejoice in the Lord always, Again I say, Rejoice. Amen.